Local businesses now discoverable in Google Maps’ Street View

It goes without saying that local business listings and mapping services like Google Maps form the perfect combo. However, Street View street-level imagery on Google Maps lacks many layers found in the regular map and satellite views. Google has moved early Monday to fix this omission by enabling local business information in Street View. According to a Street View engineer Stéphane Lafon, the new release of local business annotations improves content discoverability.

Street View can now show you local businesses relative to your current location, such as nearby restaurants and shops, hotels, banks, etc. Figuring out those destinations in Street View should become a second nature, Lafon wrote in a blog post:

When you’re touring in Street View and see a business that piques your interest, now you can find a clickable icon that will take you to the business listing where you can find out the name, hours, read reviews, and more.

Not all the points of interests found in the regular view are live in Street View yet, Google noted. The company said it will extend the coverage “to include more businesses,” in addition to transit locations in the future.

Christian’s Opinion

For all its eye-candy and panoramic imagery, we still have to switch to the regular map to check out points of interests. There’s no denying that Google has been moving at a snail’s pace in respect to enhancing Street View with rich data. The ability to check out local businesses in Street View is cool, but users want more. The upcoming transit information will also be nice, but what about other layers and points of interests?

And why am I not able to just click that restaurant in Street View instead of having to spot that icon? That would have been far more intuitive (or maybe I’m just being too picky). Don’t get me wrong, I love Street View, but this just shows that today’s mapping services, for all their usefulness, can still be improved in ways more than one.